An incident in Asia, Singapore to be exact, where a crash between two ships has left a spill in the water. Will the authorities and organizations react fast to contain the spill? Will there be lessons learned from South Korea's spill that will be applied?

The damage appeared to be limited to one compartment in the double-hulled tanker, the Bunga Kelana 3, with the spill amounting to about 18,000 barrels. In comparison, the most conservative estimates of the ongoing BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico are 5,000 barrels a day.

Yet on the news to-day it seems like the mess in the gulf is about to be put to a hault with plugging the oil hole. Still did I not hear the same some weeks ago along with a lot of other full-time cures that did not work out?

http://thespec.com/article/779200 An item from May 31 about an oil leak at a Chevron plant (Burrard Inlet) out B.C.'s way. How big an issue has it been in the news there? By chance, I found this item while searching for an unrelated item in the newspaper archives.

That put into a bit of reading, but also thinking about then, now & the future. Especially when we realize that the oil does not disperse, to also the holed dug by shovel came to a hault at only 4' & from then on had to use back-hoe & such mechanical means.

I to wonder abuut the work by MIT & if anyone has taken its work into serious considration.

For that full oil ship that broke up in Alaska was something we Cdns watched all the time even it it was Alaska. Also we are watching the mess down at the gulf & where it is flowing to. More of this & the oil will work its way about the tip of Flordia & start to work its way up the Atlantic so by touching some of the most eastern States & finally to Halifax of all things.

I to wonder about the feathered things even now after taking in small bits of oil for food & it is not. Same with all the underwater life that could be doing the same down at the gulf or wherever it travels to.

For definately BP & others rally do not know what to do when something goes wrong. Other then I hear of some other way they can stop this loss of oil, but then it seems to be like all the others in being a flop again. To say something like 41% of the oil can be saved is really the lower of the true 100%.

True there was a big almost water surface burn-off to-day, but doubt it it touched much let alone the grass lands & waters of Louisiana. To also effecting Mississippi not to mention Flordia. So it is obviouse we are living in some terrible times of North America AND can it become worse????????

BEIJING — Chinese officials are requiring ports around the country to revise their operations to better prevent oil spills in the aftermath of a pipeline explosion last week that resulted in an enormous spill in northeast China. The spill was the largest in this country in recent memory, and crews were still struggling on Friday to clean it up.

China Daily, an official English-language newspaper, reported Friday that the Ministry of Transportation had issued a notice urging all local transport authorities to check operations at ports handling dangerous chemicals by August. Special teams will be sent occasionally to patrol at major oil and chemical ports. Ports that handle oil, liquefied chemicals and gases are now required to carry out check-ups every two years, as well as coming up with emergency response plans and conducting drills.

The oil spill, at the port city of Dalian, is the result of a pipeline explosion on July 16. The first explosion triggered a similar burst at a smaller pipeline near Xingang Harbor. Both pipelines are owned by China National Petroleum Corporation, one of the large state-run oil enterprises. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/24/world/asia/24china.html

The spilled oil, used to warm water for tropical fish aquariums, could reach up to 2,000 liters, and has spread to a 500-meter radius covering the surface, according to the aquarium and the local coast guard.

Rig on fire 80 miles off Louisiana coast GRAND ISLE, La. - An offshore petroleum platform exploded and was burning Thursday in the Gulf of Mexico about 130 kilometres off the Louisiana coast, west of the site where BP's undersea well spilled after a rig explosion.

Gulf platform crew awaiting transport to Houma hosptialPublished: Thursday, September 02, 2010, 1:18 PM Updated: Thursday, September 02, 2010, 1:35 PMDavid Hammer, The Times-Picayune The 13 crewmmembers of the disabled Mariner Energy rig are awaiting transport from another rig to Terrebonne General Medical Center in Houma, according to a manager of the company contracted to provide helicopter service to Mariner rigs.

In a statement, officials with Mariner Energy, a Houston-based company, said it observed no leaking oil from its burning production platform at Vermilion Block 380, about 102 statutory miles (approximately 80 nautical miles) off the coast of Louisiana.

NEW ORLEANS - Unlike the blast that led to the massive BP spill, the latest oil platform fire in the Gulf of Mexico killed no one and sent no crude gushing into the water.

The Mariner Energy-owned platform that erupted in flames Thursday was just 200 miles west of the spill site, but everything from the structures to the operations to the safety devices were different.

Yet when word of the latest mishap spread, residents along the coast could think only of the three-month spill that began after the drilling rig Deepwater Horizon exploded on April 20, killing 11 workers.

Hey, MIT's nanowires for oilspills are FINALLY in the news again. There is a bot with the wires being tested.

Fleet of robots designed to clean up oilScientists at MIT have created Seaswarm, which uses super- absorbent 'nanofabric' to suck up slick on the surface of the ocean. It's too late for the gulf spill, but it offers promise for cleaning up future slicks.

By Lori Kozlowski, Los Angeles Times

September 4, 2010Want to clean up an oil spill? There's a robot for that. A team of scientists at MIT have developed a fleet of oil-absorbing robots — Seaswarm — that clean the ocean by collecting oil with a super-absorbent "nanofabric."

First tested in the Charles River in Boston in August, the box-shaped robots are able to stay in water for long periods without making repeated trips back to shore because they function independently, communicating with one another through global positioning systems and wireless communications.

Measuring 16 feet long and 7 feet wide, a Seaswarm robot is smaller than most commercial skimmers, making it able to travel into hard-to-reach places, such as estuaries. The MIT-patented nanofabric — that is, a fabric enhanced by nanotechnology — is an interwoven mesh of extremely tiny wires made of potassium manganese oxide that can absorb 20 times its weight in oil. http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-oil-robot-20100904,0,3812549.story